Classified Employee of the Month

Meet Julie Ceballos

Julie Ceballos is one of those colleagues you know you can depend on. “Over the seven-plus years I've known and worked with Julie, she has consistently demonstrated her willingness to help anyone across campus who needed her Web expertise,” says her nominator, Lois Jenkins, Marketing/Communications program coordinator. “Learning how to use OmniUpdate for campus websites has been much less difficult with her cheerful coaching and guidance than I nervously anticipated.”

Ceballos says two sayings have been true for her: When one door closes, another one opens. And life is a journey, not the destination. “I also know that being in the right place at the right time helps, and that is pure luck,” Ceballos says. “I started as a temporary employee in fall 2006 before filling the permanent Web content developer job a year later. My being there to fill a vacated position was the lucky part.”

As a lifelong learner, she immediately started taking classes at De Anza when she moved to Sunnyvale in 1989. Many of those classes, including a couple Environmental Studies classes in the early 1990s, helped her along her winding career path from retail to corporate facilities into IT customer support.

As well as all the individual department and program websites that she works on every day, Ceballos has worked on some major projects with the Web Team and other departments. Milestones include implementing OmniUpdate as De Anza’s Web content management system; creating an online Virtual Tour for Outreach; refreshing the De Anza website with Marketing; serving as the De Anza representative for the districtwide MyPortal rollout and improvement team with ETS and Foothill; and developing technology solutions for faculty with OmniUpdate and Course Studio.

Ceballos is also an accomplished photographer and an environmentalist who actively promotes sustainability, on campus and off. She worked with CEAG to develop the Sustainability Management Plan, the first of its kind for a community college.

What Ceballos likes most about her job is that she is constantly learning. “It’s a requirement from the technology side of things. But it’s more than that. My perspective is constantly changing through website projects and committee work that I do. I feel good when I’m presented with a question or problem and can help sort through to win-win solutions that work,” she says. “I also believe strongly in continual improvement, always checking in on processes and how they can be tweaked for better results. I feel I have the power to do that in the work I do with the Web Team. Also I love that I am part of an educational community, one where I can give back to the system that I’ve benefitted from in so many ways.”

Jenkins says Ceballos is a vital employee. “Without her work the college would not have the essential Web presence so necessary for our students. I'm only surprised that Julie hasn't already won this award.”